Hey guys, welcome back.
And thanks for hanging out with me today.
Today we're talking about how to get unstuck using baby steps.
And as I talked about in the intro,
you might be feeling two different ways.
So you might be the type of person who is completely discontent and frustrated,
uninspired and you know you need a change,
but you don't know what it is or how to go about getting that change to come into your life
or how to move forward.
And the second one might be, all right, well, you're, you're fairly happy.
You're comfortable.
Things are going pretty well, but you're just too comfortable.
You might even be bored and you do.
You feel stuck stagnant and uninspired and you also know that it's time to grow and expand
and move forward, but you don't know what that looks like or how to get the ball moving.
So this is for both of those people right there.
And I've been in both of those situations and I believe we go through these different
moments of stuckness for a lack of a better word,
many different times in our life.
And it's usually at a time when we need to grow.
So we, I think we have like these ups and downs where we're growing and we're learning
and then we get to a certain point and we're comfortable and then we're just stuck, right?
And it's a time to expand again.
And for different reasons though, obviously these are two different situations,
but you can start moving forward in both of these situations with this very simplistic tool.
And I talked about this before on the podcast, but I want to really emphasize how successful
this is in so many different ways.
And it's talking about taking small bite-sized steps, right?
And what I talked about before on the podcast was, you know, a lot of times when people
feel stuck, they don't really know what they want, okay?
And I did an exercise in an earlier podcast and I'll link that in the show notes
on an exercise that you can do where you could learn what brings you joy.
You can kind of reignite that.
You can get to know yourself again.
And the way I did this was I encouraged you to do a journal exercise where you go
back to the different time periods in your life and you try to stir up what
you joy during that time period.
And I'm talking about what did you love doing when you were five?
What did you love doing when you were 10, you know, and go through the all the different stages of your life?
And while you may have loved playing in the sand at the beach when you were five,
and now, you know, you're in your fifties and you love gardening, there are similarities there, right?
So after you write down all these things that you know brought your joy throughout your life
and you're remembering because maybe you don't have much joy in your life right now, right?
So you're like, I don't know.
I don't know what makes me happy.
And so that's what this is.
It's sort of like a remembering and you can even do an exercise where you go and try to talk to your
future self and say what brings you joy in the future, right?
So there's a different exercise that you could, different ways you could do this exercise.
And I did a meditation.
This meditation is currently on sale in my Patreon.
You could join my sole online self-care insiders club.
You get two free meditations, visualizations or affirmations a month.
So you'll get two different recordings and it's going to either be a visualization,
meditation or affirmation recording.
And so you could join the intersiders club and just get those for free among other things that I do in there.
Or you could buy them there, like as products that you could buy individually and they're very inexpensive.
So I go through this whole visualization exercise where you go and visit yourself at all these different time periods
that it's kind of fun and interesting.
And it's just a great way to stir up and reconnect to the things that bring you joy in your life, right?
And so this is a really important part of the exercise because you have to know what you're working towards.
And a lot of times when you're feeling stuck, you really don't know what you're working towards.
All right.
So that's one way to kind of like dig up and reconnect with certain things that make you happy.
And then it's about bringing that into your life, creating space and bringing that into your life.
So creating space, the one thing that you need to do, most people say to me,
I don't have time for this.
Like I don't have time for happy things in my life.
And it's funny because that's what we're here for really.
We're not here to work. We're not here to do all these things that we're kind of forced to do in our society.
We're here to live our lives and enjoy ourselves and have a good time and be joyful, loving human beings, right?
But the majority of us, most of us, are spending 90% of our time doing other things, all right?
So bringing this back into your life can be quite, it feels quite impossible.
And so creating space, what does that look like?
Right?
So you did the joy exercise, right? Now you want to create space.
So what I encourage you to do then is also another journaling exercise.
You're going to take out that notebook again and you're going to start asking yourself questions.
And one of the questions I want to ask you to ask yourself is,
what are the things that suck the energy out of me right now in my life?
So maybe this looks like a person, maybe this looks like an activity.
Maybe this is a situation, okay?
It could just be a state of being like maybe your house is cluttered and that sucks the energy out of you.
Look at all the different places that are stealing energy from you and just be honest, right?
Be completely honest with yourself.
You know, it might be a family member that you love dearly, but they're sucking the life out of you, right?
So these are your energy vampires.
And one of the things I suggest that you do to really start to kind of dig through those energy vampires and figure out ways to,
I hate to use the word get rid of them because when it comes to people, you don't want to get rid of people.
Or maybe you do, but for the most part, a lot of us don't really want to get rid of that person,
but we want to resolve the issue, right?
So it's about figuring out ways to either ditch the situation, the object, the person.
So really get rid of them, delegate it somehow, and I'll explain that in a second.
Or it's something that you just have to keep in your life.
Like you have no choice.
So like sometimes your kids might be sucking the life out of you, right?
So usually when it's a person, right?
When it's a person that's sucking the life out of you, there's usually a need for some boundaries, like with children, right?
Or their delegation might look like maybe finding the perfect babysitter so that you can go out once a week
and spend some time with yourself, even if it's just for an hour, you know?
Or having a family member come over for an hour or doing something for yourself for an hour.
That's what it might look like.
It might look like a very simplistic boundary where maybe when this family member calls you on the phone,
maybe they call you every day or once a week and they suck the life out of you during that time period,
when they start to go into that conversation that starts taking your energy,
you set a boundary and you say, "I really don't want to talk about that.
Can we talk about something else and change the subject?
Learn how to change the subject, right?
So there's different ways that you can deal with an energy vampire person.
It could be quite difficult.
Another quite difficult situation is when you have a job that you absolutely hate.
And a lot of times what I do when I'm working with private clients and they have a job that's sucking
the life out of them, I kind of look at all the areas that we could add back in things that create
joy and pleasure.
So if you work from home making a beautiful space for yourself to work in, right?
It could be improving all the other areas of your life, removing all stresses and friction
and unnecessary things that are causing to drain things that are draining you from your energy.
So it's about fixing all the other areas of life, adding the energy back in and making it
beautiful and comfortable because you have no choice but to work at this job.
And then at the same time you could maybe start a side hustle, you can maybe go back to school
or maybe you could look for a new job or whatever that might be.
It looks like it's a different look for every person but basically you're going to have this list.
So you're going to have these three columns, ditch, delegate and do.
Okay, I call it the three D's and you're going to take all these energy vampires and you're
going to put them into these situations.
So something that might be draining you is working 40 plus hours a week, maybe up to 80 hours a week
and then you're still the person who's responsible for cooking all the meals or you're still the
person who's responsible for cleaning or taking care of the household.
Maybe you're in a family of four and you have 85% of that responsibility on top of the 80 plus
hours of work that you're doing each week. Well, that's a delegation problem.
Okay, so if you have a family of four then things need to be delegated in some way where it's going
to equalize things out a little bit. So it doesn't delegation doesn't always look perfect.
Now, if you have the means you could hire someone to come in and you might say, I can't afford that.
Okay, and maybe you can't. I know most people can't, right? But maybe you can, maybe you don't know
how much that costs and maybe you could have a person come in once a month to do a deep clean,
once a month. Maybe that's something you could do. Maybe you live in a place where you could send your
laundry out and look into how much that cost you might be pleasantly surprised. It might not cost that much.
Right? So always look into seeing if you can delegate it in that way. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Now, if that's just out of the question, then delegation within the family needs to be done.
So look at different creative ways that you could do that. Like if it's a dinner situation, you could
actually say, all right, well, maybe my partner can do two nights. I could do two nights.
And then if you have, you know, teenage children, you could have them do one night. They have to plan
it and everything. So maybe you're doing the food shopping, which might look like you ordering stuff
online, have it delivered. If you live in a place that does that, or you order it online and somebody
picks it up, you take turns picking it up from the food store between you and your partner. So it's
delegating in these little ways. So then you have your partner doing two days, you're doing two days,
your kids are doing one, right? So that's five. And then you have two more days. It could be let's eat
out one night and let's leave. Let's make something with leftovers once a week so that we have leftovers.
So that's what that could look like, right? So and not everybody has this situation, right? So if you're
working, you're a single person living by yourself and you're working 80 hours a week and you just
don't want to cook dinner, what that delegating might look like batching, like batch cooking and
freezing and doing stuff and putting stuff in your refrigerator in your freezer so that you have
it already made. And on those days when you're coming home from work, you have something there that's
going to be healthy and you're not going to waste a lot of money ordering out every night. And also
that's not really good for you. So there's different ways to delegate. Now when you're delegating to
another person or maybe your kids, one of the things that a lot of people struggle with is the
perfection of having it done your way. And so when you're delegating, you do have to master
letting go of it being done in a different way and just be happy with it being done, okay? And as an
example, I always use this as an example, but you know, maybe someone's going to maybe your kids
are going to come home from school and they're going to fold the towels that are in the dryer.
It's a very simple thing to do. A lot of kids can do that. It's a really good
way to have somebody else take part in household duties, right? And I always say, you know, we live
in a house together. We all should participate in the house, right? And so your kid comes home and they
fold the towels, but they don't really fold them. They kind of roll them up and put them in the,
and put them in the the linen closet, right? Or wherever you put your towels, right? And you can
stand it. Like if you're like me, like I fold towels a certain way and I want this the outer edges
to face a certain way and it looks really neat and pretty, but let's let's let's just really look
at that. Like I had to let go of that obviously, right? I couldn't, you know, continue to do that all
through my life, especially as a single mom with three kids, right? And so let him go of the perfection
and realizing that the towels are clean and it's done who gives a flying fuck what it looks like,
okay? Nobody cares. Nobody nobody's going to look in your closet and judge you. Just let go of it
and be happy that the towels are clean and done, okay? And on the other hand, your kids are learning
responsibilities, right? Now I was not the perfect parent, but I did, my kids did have to participate
because I was a single parent and they were kind of like forced to learn how to do these things.
And I'm going to share something with you. My oldest daughter is now 30 years old.
When she went to college, okay? So this is back a little while. When she went to school,
she was the only one that knew how to do laundry and I'm not exaggerating. So she went to a school
that was, it wasn't like, you know, a very, it was a private college. She got a really good scholarship
and a lot of the kids there were very well off. That's just how I'm going to put it. They were well
off and they did not know how to do laundry and she spent a lot of her time teaching other kids how
to do stuff, right? And she hated that, but I was like, that is eye-opening, right? So think about that
when you're delegating duties and don't feel bad. These are things, these are life tools that
everybody has to learn and being a part of a household is being a part of a household. And I don't
know about you. And as I said, I'm not the perfect parent. Like I didn't do all these things all the time.
Like, you know, looking back and hindsight, obviously I'm like, oh, I should have did this, I should have
did that. Nobody is a perfect parent. There's no book that can even guide you to be a perfect parent.
We all make mistakes, right? But when we, when we teach our kids, when our kids have to be responsible,
both the female and male versions of our children, then when they're adults, they move into a household
being an equal partner, right? And that's what we want. That we want our kids to be equal partners.
We don't want our kids to expect to be weighted on or have things done for them continuously, right?
So I feel like this is just a better way to do things anyway. Okay, I'm flowing off topic. This is
what happens when I don't have my notes in front of me. All right, so we've ditched, we've delegated,
and then there's some things that we just have to do, right? So we have to exercise. Like nobody can
exercise for us. We know we need to exercise. There's certain things that we have to do. But what we're
doing with this list is we're creating space for those little moments of joy that we had. Okay? And
so when we remove some of the energy vampires, and it's not going to be perfect, but you can
pick through all these different situations, remove some of these energy vampires, and what do you
get? You get your time back, especially when you're setting boundaries with people. You get your
time back and you get your energy back a little bit of it here and there, right? And those count.
I don't know about you, but those are some of our most valuable things in life, right? Time and energy.
Okay, so those are the things that we want to protect, and those are the things that we should
protect like our life depends on it because it actually does, right? And so you you've explored
what brings you joy. You did that exercise, and now you've created space by doing the three Ds.
And now you're going to move into the baby steps, which is what I wanted to talk about. So
a lot of times still after doing these exercise, people come out and they're like, I still don't know
what I want. I don't know. I really don't know what the next step is. And so what I want you to focus
is on would be more of a feeling than an outcome. Okay, because a lot of times when we have these
big goals, like say your goals to buy a house and move or buy a car or get a new job or whatever
it might be, you know, if you really get down to the nitty gritty of why you want that certain thing,
why you have that goal is because you want to achieve a certain feeling in your body. Okay,
I want to feel safe and secure. I want to feel successful. I want to just be happy.
I want to feel relaxed. I don't want to be stressed out anymore. Okay, so you have like this goal to
feel a certain way. So if you do have a goal, a good thing to do would be to explore the feeling that
you're trying to get from that goal, because if you're working towards any goal, knowing the feeling
that you want is a really good thing to focus on. Okay, and so if you don't know what you want,
this is a great way to start. Focus on the feeling you want. So what, let's just focus on joy. Okay,
so maybe you just want to be happy. You want to have more fun. You're not having any fun right now.
You want to have more fun. Focus on that. That's your goal. Okay, and if you're like, I don't really know
what I want to do. Well, look at your joy list. Maybe add some of those things into your life,
but let's go back to the title of this podcast and that is baby steps. Okay, so the best way to create
success, inspiration, and motivate momentum is taking baby steps. All right, and in the, I have a blog post,
I'll link it in the show notes that I wrote about this. I share an article from Harvard Business Journal
where it talks about how successful these baby steps are. And the reason for it is because when
you take a small step, it's so much easier to have success and it's also quicker, right? So you have a
positive outcome and it happens quicker, which encourages you to keep going when you have success.
It's exciting and you keep going. Okay, and the momentum is created by these continual wins and
celebrations and then wanting to keep going. It's almost like a boulder rolling down a hill and
it's just gaining more and more speed. And maybe it's like just getting bigger and bigger as it goes
down to, right? So that's what these baby steps are like. And so what would a baby step look like
for bringing joy into your life? And so in the, the blog post that I'm talking about that, as I said,
I'll put the link in the show notes. I share with you some of my baby steps because one of the feelings
that I want to bring into my year is more playfulness, more fun and more joy. Okay, I feel like
sometimes I'm way too serious, especially when it comes to building my business. And I just want
to be more fun because that is my personality. That's I'm just a goofball, 100% of the time.
And the people who really know me, like my kids, for example, you know, they know how much of a
a goofball I am. And so I want to bring more of this into my life, all of my life, so my business.
Like, so I might be like this on a personal level with my friends and my family, but I want to bring
this kind of stuff into my business. So how can I do that? I don't know. I don't know. Like I'm just like
you, I'm no different. So all these steps that I'm sharing with you are things that I implement in
my own life all the time. The things that I, I want my clients to do are things that I've done myself,
100% of the time. I don't ask my clients to do anything that I haven't tried myself. And so I'm
implementing these things right now because even though I know what I want, okay, I have business goals,
I have personal goals. Bringing this happiness and this silliness into my business is something like
I just really don't know how to do. And so what I decided to do is to focus on the feeling, just like
I'm telling you. And so what are things that bring joy into my life on a daily basis? Like little
small tiny little baby things, okay? And so one of those things that I've added onto my list is doing
something creative. I am an extremely creative person and that makes me so happy. And it could be
so many different things. I've done it all. I've done every type of craft. I've made jewelry. I make
my own skincare. I like painting. I like anything with clay. I like there's so many things. Would work
so many things. I just love being creative and creating some type of art. Now I'm not necessarily
like super good at it, but I don't care. I just love doing it. It's so much fun. And so how can I
bring that into my life every single day? I'm talking about baby steps every single day. So every
morning I'm drawing and I'm painting. Like I have breakfast and then I have to breakfast. I have a
certain time period before I have to do my yoga class that I spend drawing. I put music on,
which is another one of my baby steps. Music makes me happy. I've always loved music. I've been a musician.
I wouldn't say I'm a musician right now, but I have been in the past and I love all types of music.
I think there is a type of music or a flavor of music for every moment in your life because
music anchors different feelings into your body. So what type of music anchors happiness into your
body? Because I know what anchors happiness into mine. And it's like for some reason it's 70s music.
So I was about, you know, I was young during the 70s. Like very young. And so it must have just been
a really happy time period. So I hear like 70 songs like Kat Stevens, like my dad listened to Kat
Stevens when he used to work in his workshop downstairs. And so there's just like a good memory to me.
So it doesn't matter what the song is. It's just the sound of Kat Stevens, right? So how many people
can relate to that? Where you hear something and it just brings you back to a certain time period and
it just feels so good in your body. And so I use, that's another thing on my list, music. So I put music
on and I'm doing art. I'm doing two things that make me extremely happy. And I actually created a
playlist for myself to make me happy. Another thing is taking baths. I know that sounds so, I don't know.
It's just a very common thing that a lot of people like I guess, but I love taking baths. I always
call myself the bath whore. I just love them. Like there's days where I take two baths, okay? So
especially in the winter when it's hot out, I don't do it as much in the summer because I'm always
cold. So I just want to be warm. I do the baths, you know, the epsom salt and the different scents. And I
put a hair mask on, I put a face mask on and I put music on, I light a candle and I just chill.
That makes me so happy. And I could do that every day. Yoga makes me happy.
Genuinely makes me happy. Running makes me happy. Now this time of year, I'm not going outside and
running. I know I'm not, but I will do yoga every day. So all these things that I could add into my day
that make me happy, talking to my kids, that makes me so happy. That's so easy. I could do that every day.
I have three kids. So what's on your list? What's on your baby steps list? Go through these exercise and
decide the way, decide the goal. You can have a specific goal that you're working towards and make
those baby sits baby steps, make those baby steps move towards that goal. Even if you're not sure what
those baby steps should be, just take a guess. Ask yourself a question. If I knew what those baby steps
were, what would they be? And just guess and see how it works out because it's better than standing still.
So what's going to happen a year from now? If you just stay where you're at being frustrated,
like you're just going to still be frustrated, you're going to still be stuck. What's going to happen
if you make these changes that I talked about today? Just do do a couple of very simple,
sometimes kind of fun, you know, journaling exercises and then come up with baby steps towards
whatever that feeling is you want, that goal you want. Come up with like 25 to 50. I think that's
what I talked about in the last podcast where I talked about baby steps. 25 to 50 baby steps.
It's actually fun. I thought it would be difficult to do, but I did it myself and it was super
quick. I only spent a half an hour on that and I did it while I was watching TV. So I was just
kind of sitting on the couch thinking of things that are going to make me happy. So I don't know,
not a bad exercise, right? So think about the momentum you can create in your life doing this,
doing something positive for yourself, taking a one little baby step every day. Think about how
much success you can create within the span of a year. That is mind blowing to me because you can
make so many changes just by starting with one small tiny step. So I'm going to say if you need
like any support moving forward on this, if you need someone like me to hold your hand through it
and help you through it and work through these exercises and these processes, this is what I do
in my coaching. And so I have some spaces opening opening right now for February and spring sessions.
And so if you want to explore what types of coaching I have, I have so many different packages
and there's something for everyone. So just set up a free chat session with me. I don't know why,
I have like so much trouble speaking today. I'll put the link for that also in the show notes so that
you can set up. It's like a little 15 minute chat session. And what I do is I just point you in the
right direction. So if you need more support and you're going to tell me what you need and I'll say,
well, I have this and this will help you. It could just be a master class or it could be some private
coaching. Whatever it looks like, I will share it with you on that day. So I have like heavy levels
of support and then I have just lighter levels of support. And then I always have things for my
past clients that are like extra special. So set up the call if you need any type of support
moving forward and you're getting unstuck journey definitely reach out. But take these steps first.
I'm telling you making these small changes creates so much momentum in your life. And I would love
if you do if you do these steps, I want to know some of the outcomes that you create in your life.
So I would love for you to share any changes that you made because of these baby steps. And I would
love it if you reached out to me on Instagram. That would be wonderful. So I have an Instagram for
myself, which is at Teenestins and Coach. But there's also an Instagram for the podcast. You could reach out
on either one of those. The podcast is @SoulAlignedSelfCare. And so you could reach out on either one of those
platforms and share with me some of the different steps that you took and some of the outcomes that
you had with these successes. I would love to hear about this. Okay guys, oh those links will also
be in the show notes for you. Okay, remember to always add deep level self-care into your everyday life.
I love you and I'll talk to you next week. Bye.
